New Website, New News

I’ve been dreading this post for a few months now, putting it off for weeks, trying to figure out the best way to approach it. There’s one thing you need to know about me that I haven’t really talked about much on this blog–I have a huge guilt complex. And writing this post makes me feel guilty, makes me feel like I’m letting you down. But I’m not and I’m going to focus on that. I hope, after you read this, that you’ll be comfortable sticking around, being in my blog family–you all mean the world to me and are the only reason why I come back here day after day and make crazy new delicious creations and write about them. So if you don’t mind, grab a cup of coffee or tea or a beer and hear me out. Then let’s see where we can go from here.

My infamous mountain dew raspberry ice cream filled cupcakes, c. 2007

Three years ago, on July 7, 2007, I decided to become a vegan. I was a college student living in Atlanta at the time, and after having been a vegetarian since January 1, 2007, I decided to take the plunge into veganism. My friends Kyle and Rachael played an influential role in my decision, if only because I cooked for them on a regular basis and learned, through trial and error, how easy it was to live a vegan lifestyle.

My reasons for being a vegetarian and then a vegan were purely focused on environmental sustainability. While many vegans focus on animal rights and ethics, as well as sustainability, animal rights, to me, has always meant the right for the animal to be the animal–which also means, given the right environment (one of love, care, lots of open space to run and play around in, plenty of grass and bugs and natural things to eat, etc.), that I believe it’s ok to eat meat. HOWEVER, living in a major metropolitan city like Atlanta, eating meat is not sustainable. In order to buy pastured, grass-fed, organic, cared-for meat, it has to be driven in from 100+ miles away. Additionally it’s ridiculously expensive. As far as dairy and eggs go, again, not sustainable. While urban chickens have become the rage recently, I still know relatively few people in Atlanta with chickens. Eggs and dairy from the farms in rural Georgia travel around 100 miles to reach the city–a petroleum tag I can’t get behind. And again, “local” eggs and dairy products were extraordinarily expensive. Even if I could support the distance for “local” meat, eggs, and dairy, I couldn’t support myself while purchasing them as a student. So, for me, and as I advocate to this day, for everyone in major cities, being anything other than a vegan is unsustainable. (If you’re looking for why the meat, dairy, and egg industry is unsustainable, just read The Omnivore’s Delemma or watch Food Inc., both are accessible formats through which to learn more about the American food/factory farm system).

at the East Atlanta farmers market

Through being a vegan and through this blog, which has been around for 3.5 years now, I’ve met amazing people, both in real life and through the internet. I’ve learned oodles of things about food and cooking that I never would have–who knew that brussels sprouts & eggplant are two of my favorite vegetables? Or that fermenting and canning and making my own sauces isn’t all that hard? Or that a blog community like the vegan blog community could be so strong and so supportive? Things have been changing though, and that’s why I’m writing this.

Almost 1 year ago on August 15, 2009, I moved to Roanoke, Virginia, a small city in the southwestern corner of Virginia. Roanoke is nestled in the Appalachian mountains and is surrounded by a plethora of small, family-run, organic farms. Immediately I found the Grandin Village farmers market in my neighborhood and every Saturday morning, rain or shine, hung-over or not, I walked the three blocks to market and fell in love with and brought home some of the most interesting, varied, and fantastically delicious produce. As I got to know the farmers, every eggplant, every pepper, and every mushroom meant more than ever before and my cooking took off, with me exploring new recipes and techniques. I even led two food demonstrations on vegan and gluten-free Thanksgiving food, was featured live on the WDBJ morning show, and have become known as the local vegan foodista.

The reason why I moved to Virginia, however, was to start my MFA in creative writing, poetry, at Hollins University. Shortly after starting the program, though, I became dissatisfied, even depressed, with the academic situation. I attended a prestigious research university for undergrad, took 24 credit hours of PhD courses while an undergrad, and wrote an approximately 100 page thesis. I’m used to being challenged, to working hard, and to being around a supportive academic community. Hollins, to me, isn’t that kind of place. While I do understand that it’s the right place for many graduate students and writers, it isn’t for me. I began to hate writing, to hate poetry, and to hate everything related to my field of study. Roanoke, as a place, was perfect, but my program was not.

view from McAfee’s Knob, VA

So in October 2009 I hatched a plan–to write about food. After all, aren’t I obsessed with it? Isn’t food all I live, eat, breathe? But what to write about, what kind of project? On the plane ride back from Houston I figured it out–Appalachian food. But not just Appalachian food, the new Appalachian cuisine. What is Appalachian food today? Surely it’s the traditional dishes, but surely it’s something new too–something driven by younger people moving back into the area, moving back to start or work on the family farm, defining a new generation of regional cuisine. So that’s when it started, my project, my goal to learn everything I could about contemporary Appalachian food.

Part of the project included me being willing to eat the food. Appalachian food isn’t traditionally vegan–it’s nowhere near vegan. It’s lard and pork and organ meat. It’s everything veganism isn’t. So, while conducting my first interview and research, I ate meat–pork, to be exact.

And during all this time, I was still a vegan at home. No meat, no dairy, no eggs. Sometime during late winter, however, I decided to reintroduce eggs to my diet–but only because I knew who was raising the chickens who gave me the eggs, only because I knew that the farm was small-scale, sustainable, and cared deeply about the layers.

Then, a few months ago, the owner of Big Pine Trout Farm, the place where I learned how to fish, approached me and asked if I wanted work for him as a chef preparing locally-sourced foods for the farmers market. I took him up on the offer and that’s the job I’ve been hinting about, I’m a chef of sorts, making local food convenient.

Gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free Mountain Medley Pie

Our weekly offerings include my Mountain Medley Vegetable Pie–a quiche-like egg pie that uses local wheat flour, local eggs, local produce, and local butter and cream (soon, hopefully, local cheese, but that’s been hard to find). I’m also making a gluten-free version for several people, something that’s super exciting and fits my philosophy of feeding everyone well. I also make a smoked trout pate out of in-house mayonnaise, smoked trout, and local and organic herbs and a trout-a-fish spread which is like tuna fish but make from trout.

We’ve also started prepping for the autumn and winter months, canning everything from a version of Heidi’s Blackberry Chili Syrup to a savory cherry sauce to brandied plums and kimchi. The roasted beet and apple puree is one of my favorites–if only for the fact that I hate beets, but I love the bright purple puree. I’ve even canned and frozen 34 quarts of cauliflower soup. Heavens, that’s a lot of soup I’ll have you know.

I’ve even had the chance to cook a 5 course dinner. Something I’m not sure I ever want to do again without a sous chef, but damn, am I proud of that meal.

So it’s complicated, dear readers–my food life, I mean. At home, I eat eggs now, but you’ll never find dairy or meat in my house. Not that I won’t eat it if offered it in someone’s home or during book research, but I don’t crave meat or dairy, vegetables are what I love. However, I do plan on building a chicken coop soon and raising my own layers. I do plan on moving (in the not-so-far-off-future, I hope) to a homestead where I can raise goats and ducks and chickens and sheep. And I do plan on learning how to butcher the animals I raise. I do plan on eating them. Not very vegan of me, I suppose, but something that I believe in wholeheartedly. Something that is, in my opinion, 100% natural and sustainable. Something that fits my ethics and my beliefs about this beautiful world we live in.

North Creek, Virginia

So I’m switching blogs. I don’t feel that Cupcake Punk expresses who I am anymore–I don’t really make cupcakes anymore and I’m not very punk-ish these days. I am obsessed with farming and local food and the incredible region I live in. Eating Appalachia will still focus on vegan food–after all, it’s what I cook for myself most of the time, it’s what I advocate since most everyone doesn’t live in a region like mine, and it’s what I love. Love. I love vegan food. But I’m also going to write about my adventures with homesteading, my adventures traveling around Appalachia learning about the food. I’m going to write about what jazzes me, what keeps me going. I’m going to write about my job some. I want to share this part of my life with you. And I want you to continue to share your lives with me.

My life is crazy now–my job has taken over and I’m learning to say no, to cut back and focus on what I need to. But blogging is an important part of my life, and part of the reason I haven’t been around much is because I knew I needed to write this post, to explain where I’ve been and why I haven’t been around much.

My cabin

So come on over, check out my new home, Eating Appalachia, and tell me what you think. I know you probably have questions or you may want to talk to me about my decisions–I welcome your feedback. Please, however, respect me and my decisions in the same way that I respect you and yours. I know that my decisions might not be all-around popular, but this is who I am and I hope my new blog is a positive experience for everyone.

So here it goes. I wrote the post. I’m a little terrified. But I think it’s going to be all-good. After all, life is pretty darn good no matter what.

Hi, I only recently came across your blog but I really enjoyed reading your post. I have speed read it and am going to come back to it later and read it properly (it is a long post). In the meantime let me give you my initial thoughts for what they are worth.

I am ‘almost’ vegan, I eat one non-vegan vegetarian meal per week for convenience purposes and to kill any cravings I have for cheese, the rest of the time I eat vegan. My reasons to aim for veganism are, in order: animal welfare, sustainability, health.

I too don’t necessarily think it’s wrong per se to eat animals,there are parts of the world where humans have to eat animals to survive. I believe it’s the way we do it currently that’s wrong. Most of us don’t really need to eat animals, certainly in the quantities we do and I don’t think we should eat anything we wouldn’t be prepared to kill ourselves. This seems to fit in with your philosophy by the sound of it.

I think you have the ethics pretty much sorted, the only question I would have is related to the egg situation. What happens to any male chicks that hatch in these layers? Are they allowed to live or are they killed?

I look forward to following your new blog. By the way, your cabin looks awesome, more pictures please!

At some point you will have to replace your hens, where will you source them from if you aren’t planning on hatching them yourself? What will they do with their male chicks? Just something to think about because I think this is one of the most overlooked atrocities, the slaughter of billions of day old chicks just because they’re the ‘wrong’ sex.

I’m sorry you have received some extremely negative comments already. I have to admit if you do intend to butcher animals I wouldn’t want to read about that and would probably unsubscribe. I just couldn’t do it myself and would be squeamish about it. But I think I’m allowed as I aren’t eating meat. If I was eating meat it would be hypocritical of me. I guess a lot people will feel the same and I understand in a way why some people are negative about your decision. Maybe it just seems like a backward step?

But as Renae says your decision has obviously been well thought out and you aren’t just going out and suddenly buying McDonald’s and Kentucky. These are the people we need to be ‘educating’. Hope that doesn’t sound patronising. I’m rambling so i’ll stop.

I am deeply dissapointed by what you ‘ve written. The worst thing is that you are planning to butcher innocent defenceless animals and feeling good about it. It’s one thing to buy meat even prapare it but to be a murderer is quite another. And don’t try to make yourself feel better by insisting that the animals will live a happy life because in the end you’ll kill them. You have no right to do that. The animals are not meant for us to murder and eat them, they have their own lives to live and to them they are just as important as yours is to you. This is speciesm, racism, what makes you think that the animals are lesser than us and that even if they were that qualifies us to eat them? The only thing we have more than them is a bigger brain and it’s useless if we don’t learn how to use it. You yourself now how healthy you can be without animal products. So why do you need to cause needless suffering? Because that’s what you ‘ll do. When you grab that butcher knife and advance to them you’ ll see them cowering and frantically try to save themselves. How can you say they are different than humans? How can you say that it doesn’t matter if they die? It does damnit because THEY DON”T WANT TO DIE? And I don’t get it, as someone who writes about vegan food that most of us vegans who read it eat like that for the animals, you expect us to be ok with it??? TO support you when you not only plan to eat more meat when you yourself know it’s completely unecessary, but brutally murder innocent lives yourself???? I am appalled. We should have some lenience for people who are very detached from what they eat so they don’t really get the murder, or those who little by litle try to limit it or those who are brainwashed with health concerns, but people like you?? Who know better and have lived healthily like that but start selfishly to eat animals again? And the horror be the ones who butcher them? I have no words to describe how sick I feel after reading this. I have many more things to say to you but I fear they will be for nothing. I will say only this. Any animal , or part of an animal is not yours to take. Period. Let them live freely, as you want to live your life too.

To each his own. I did add your new blog to my googlereader… I’ll be honest though, if there is a lot of meat, I will unsubscribe. To each his own, right? As a vegan, I don’t care for pictures and discussions of meat, though I can be tolerant. We’ll give it a shot.

Wow. First of all, is that really your cabin? If so – can I please be your roommate?!?! That is basically my DREAM cabin. You are so incredibly lucky.

About your decision. Wow, again. Obviously, I can’t say I agree with your choices, but you don’t need me to and you didn’t ask me to. I will say that it takes A LOT of courage to announce this. I’ve gotten a slew of hate mail for a lot less.

I think you stayed true to your environmental convictions as you see them and have figured out what to do to make you the most happy. It is interesting how our food choices change and shift throughout the years. I’ve only been vegan for 3 years and my thoughts and motivations and priorities have transformed just in that short time. I think keeping our minds open, staying receptive to what our hearts are telling us, and never being scared to ask the hard questions, is all we can ever do. Good luck to you, and, no matter what, I will always consider you a friend and be glad to have met you! 🙂

I can’t say that this doesn’t make me feel sad, but since I believe that humans are by nature omnivores (I do, however, believe that consuming dairy products is unnatural), and since I know the entire human race is never going to go vegan, it is my fervent wish that everyone who chooses to eat meat would have the attitude you do about it. I went vegetarian because I believe factory farming is wrong and the only meat I had access to was factory farmed. It also dawned on me I could never, ever kill an animal and I think it is wrong to eat something you can’t kill yourself. So in accordance to my beliefs, if you are able to kill an animal (and the animal was not factory farmed), well, you’ve got more right to eat it than most people. If I hadn’t known you as a vegan, I’d be so happy to meet you and hear your position on meat-eating – I don’t have a problem with omnivores who have at least thought things through and aren’t contributing to factory farming. I think it’s just going to be difficult for some people to accept because they’ll feel like “our team” has lost you. I guess it’s like, although we’ve never met in person, because you were vegan, it felt like I understood you a lot better than I would have some other random food blogger – we had this huge thing in common. So I sort of feel a sense of loss. I say that because I think you probably will get a lot of negative feedback about this and I think that may explain some of it. But I’ll certainly follow your new blog (if I could find the RSS feed) – I follow several non-vegan blogs and hopefully yours will continue to be nearly vegan anyway. Plus, I like your recipes and your writing, and I like you. I wouldn’t have made your decision, but it’s your decision, not mine, and it was clearly well thought out.

I am a friend of Jes, and I happen to live in Roanoke, VA. I am saddened that folks would feel so upset with her decision; especially considering her honesty. I do not believe there is a true black or white ground in this situation.

I was vegetarian for ten years, and at points tried to be vegan. I became very sick, and I do not feel that I was lax in preparing good, healthy food. I have had serious illnesses during my life, and I think learning how to eat better was critical for me to become healthier. I am incredibly thankful for those years, and I would never give them up. Yet, once I became pregnant my body craved meat, and I finally gave in. It made me feel incredibly guilty, and I hid this from my vegetarian community for a long time, but my body seemed to scream that I needed to give to the new person in my body. For us, it was the best decision I could make. To become a parent is to sacrifice, and embrace the closure of parts of your life. I can not explain this to someone who has not been a parent, but it is amazing, and very humbling. Even though I question my belief in God. It is the closest I have come to a religious experience.

Last year, I took a course in Ecology. It helped to confirm a conclusion that there is suffering in all forms. It seems to be a great denial if one believes you can get away with not killing. One can read articles about how large scale agricultural farming (pretty much anything at a regular grocery store; even if it is organic) regularly kills the ecosystem (both plant and animal) of the area and beyond. Even regular gardening is a form of killing-who doesn’t try to keep insects from eating their much loved fruits and veggies? Are insects any less important? Are bacteria any less important? What life is without value? We would have to cease existing all together to end this “suffering.”

I have been thinking a lot about death in the last few years. My son’s father killed himself, and it truly brought a deep sadness over this intense transition. I also found that my child-self felt as if it had “died” with me becoming a parent,and I would like to propose this thought: What if death is life, and life is death. This is a cyclical belief. My body is your body and your body is my body, because energy (in a scientific sense) never dissipates. I believe that is beautiful, and I thank all the lives that have had to be sacrificed to create my form. Thank you Mama. Thank you Father. Thank you Earth. Thank you Universe.

It is my opinion, that Jes is giving her deepest respect to the lives she chooses to take. She is acknowledging their suffering, but she is facing it boldly. We would all do well to look as deeply at our own actions, and not throw the proverbial stone.

As I become older, I continuously wonder: Is death so awful? We will all die, and none of us know that it is such a tragedy. That is a great mystery; that we will all one day travel. I am in awe that my body will one day be given back to this great mystery. Even with my limited scientific understanding: THIS IS MIRACULOUSLY BEAUTIFUL.

I would personally like to wish Jes the best in her path. I feel very blessed to know her, and it brings me even greater joy to realize that she moved to Roanoke on my birthday. What a lovely gift. Thank you.

It’s obvious that you have wrestled with this issue for awhile now – and didn’t decide to do this on impulse. Having come to the conclusion you did…well, that apparently is the right decision for you at this point. I respect your decision and look forward to many more posts from you.

Jes! Joy to you, in finding what you love again. I’m so sorry the MFA thing was sucking you dry — it can do that. But I hope you find yourself in cooking and working with people who are close to the land, and in being close to the land yourself.

Thank you for never judging me as I struggled to maintain a vegan lifestyle. And failed. And failed again. And kept trying.

Wish you had told us about the new blog earlier, so that I could have read it as it was growing – now I’ll have to go read through from the beginning! And your Flickr photos would have made more sense, too: many was the time I’d see a picture go by and say, “wait, I thought she was a vegan.”

I’m glad for you, and that you’re someplace you can be sustainable and eating good food.

So many people get all hung up about it, as if they’re somehow superior to people who eat meat. It’s never been that way for us (although, having been raised vegetarian, eating meat just doesn’t come easily).

There are good reasons to eat meat (I’m thinking of deer, for instance, because they don’t get culled adequately and destroy the forests).

What’s funny is that you’re the first American I’ve ever known who’s an “ethical vegetarian” – they’re pretty much the only kind we get over here in the UK. It’s actually the first thing people ask when we tell them we’re vegetarian, “oh, are you an ethical vegetarian?” That says to the people here that you’d eat meat if it were treated well and sustainably grown, but that it’s not, so there’s no meat to eat.

Your ethics work, philosophically, in that they are rational, thought-out, and … ethical. You are in line with your own values, and those line up very well with the values to which I ascribe. You have morals, and are virtuous.

Hi Jes,
I have always liked to read your blog. I loved your awesome, creative recipes and your way of writing. I thought very long wether to post a comment to this post or not. You made a decision and I have no right to judge or critize you.
I am vegan for ethical reasons. To me the “right to be an animal” includes their right not to be exploited, their right to live. Seeing you with the dead fish in your hands made me sad and I didn’t feel very comfortable.
Thank you for explaining your reasons though. I think it is brave and I also can imagine it was difficult.

So glad that you found something that you love and ditched the MFA program. You have to live your own life, no one can tell you how to live it and don’t let them. I’ll be checking out your new blog, probably won’t be commenting on the meaty stuff but it’s vegan, I’m there. 🙂

Jes, I think this was the bravest blog post I’ve ever read. I think your reasoning is sound and I applaud your ethical approach to eating meat. It is clear you have put a lot of thought into your new diet and the boundaries you are comfortable with. If all of us put half as much thought and care into even a small percentage of the decisions in our lives, we would all be better people. Far be it from us to judge you and I hope you don’t take to heart any negative comments…although it seems the response to your announcement has been overwhelmingly positive and accepting. Good luck with your new work redefining and documenting the food of such a culturally rich region. I will be subscribing to your new blog and I know I will enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed cupcake punk.